Facilitative behavioral interactions between deepwater piscivores at Isla del Coco National Park and Las Gemelas Seamount, Costa Rica

Abstract

<p>The shallow waters around Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, have the highest density of apex predators within the Eastern Tropical Pacific. This represents a unique opportunity to assess the structure of predatory interactions in a community relatively unimpacted by fishing. Facilitation of predation has commonly been observed in shallow reef systems, limited in depth by observations via scuba divers. Here we present a preliminary catalog of facilitative behavioral interactions between 12 taxa of deepwater piscivores at Isla del Coco and Las Gemelas Seamount in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, collected via video from submersible vehicles to depths of approximately 311 m from 2002-2012. Observations were ad hoc and likely represent only a portion of the web of interactions that occur in this ecological setting. That such interactions can be observed to 300 m during the narrow time frame of submersible dives suggests that direct behavioral facilitation of piscivory may play a significant role in the apex predator guild of deepwater fishes. Investigating the extent and population-community consequences of such interactions will provide valuable insight into patterns and processes that occur in communities protected from direct fisheries as well as focus conservation actions. Rev. Biol. Trop. 64 (Suppl. 1): S187-S196. Epub 2016 February 01.</p><p> </p>

Coordinated hunting behaviors of mixed-species groups of piscivores and associated species at Isla del Coco National Park (Eastern Tropical Pacific)

“…Further, results from this study were similar to those from sub-tropical reefs in the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, with an apparent degree of redundancy in the piscivore guild and a subset of species that act as strong interactors within the behavior web (Auster et al, 2013). Morphological variation within groups also appeared to be a common element structuring group composition (e.g., Auster et al, 2016). However, with such limited sets of observations from other sites for comparison, we could only hypothesize that there were factors that constrained richness, group size, and composition for species in this trophic guild (e.g., Sih et al, 1998).…”

“…SCUBA was employed during 111 person-dives at 39 dive stations between 10 and 35 m depth, for a total dive time of 188 h (inclusive of 2-4 divers on each dive). The submersible vehicle DeepSee (Cortés, Blum, 2008) was used for an additional two dives using the same sampling protocol (Starr et al, 2012;Auster et al, 2016) to extend observations to the 50-80 m depth range for an additional 2.4 h.…”

A Systematic Review of Remotely Operated Vehicle Surveys for Visually Assessing Fish Assemblages

“…Collecting data before and after the establishment of a MPA, as part of a before-after-control-impact (BACI) approach, would account for the natural differences between MPAs and controlled sites, which may more accurately reflect the influence of disturbance events, such as trawling (Lindholm et al, 2015). Since the first publication in 2003, five studies have examined the influence of MPAs on fish communities using ROVs (Auster et al, 2003(Auster et al, , 2016Harter et al, 2009;Karpov et al, 2012), with only one employing a BACI sampling design (Haggarty et al, 2016).…”

Follower fish of the goldspotted eel Myrichthys ocellatus with a review on anguilliform fish as nuclear species

“…These fish are considered to be inquisitive, they display opportunistic feeding behavior, and are known for following a wide range of reef fish species [4,31,32], as well as sea stars [33] and octopuses [4]. The main follower species of eels, the coney grouper Cephalopholis fulva is highly opportunistic and has been reported in interspecific feeding associations as a follower [3,9], mimic [34], or even a preying cleaner species [35].…”